Free Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott

separate small blackboard for that, with reminders clipped neatly to the bottom. But this sheet of paper detailed every time Olivia left the house and every time she came back in again. It also listed any phone calls she’d received, however trivial. ‘Phone call at 10.13 am. Wrong number.’ What was
that
all about?
    When questioned about his wife’s mental health issues, Robert had implied that they had set up solutions to help Olivia, which would suggest there was a forwards-looking plan she had to follow. This schedule appeared to be written in retrospect – either what she was about to do or what she’d actually
done
, rather than what she
planned
to do. Sometimes there were remarks like ‘Returning to Sainsbury’s – forgot the eggs. Back in 20 minutes’ as if it was a message to somebody. And she’d written on the board today – or yesterday, as it was now well past midnight – that she had returned from school with the children. But thechildren hadn’t even
been
to school.
    She looked more closely at the chart. Most of the entries used pencil, red pen, blue pen – even children’s crayons. But the entries for the last few days were all in the same pen, and she couldn’t be absolutely sure they were the same handwriting as the previous ones. She needed to get somebody else to look at this. Not that it meant anything. Olivia could have written those entries days ago. As could Robert, for that matter.

12
    Saturday
    Robert waited fifteen minutes after the house was emptied of bodies with their relentless questioning and the beeping of their mobile phones. He grabbed a bottle of water, his car keys and his wallet, and made his way out of the front door. The security light came on, but the beam wasn’t shining on their drive, as it should have been. It was shining straight across the road into Mrs Preston’s window. It must have been knocked out of alignment somehow, and he could see a shadow standing back from the bedroom window opposite. He knew the light would have alerted his neighbour and she would be watching with interest. Well, no doubt she would get the opportunity to have her say, because he was fairly certain the whole street would be questioned as soon as they were up and about.
    He’d planned to leave as quietly as possible, but as the nosey old bat was watching anyway, he revved the car and was about to speed off down the road with a squeal of tyres, just to wind up the silly bitch, when he noticed a car parked further down the road. Not a car that was normally on this street. It didn’t take him long to work out what it was.
Bastard police
. He eased his foot off the accelerator and, with his car emitting the gentle hum of an expensive engine, he slowly and almost silently made his way off the drive. If he was followed, he would just have to have another think.
    Much to his amazement, when he reached the long straight road towards the M56 there was nobody behind him. His suspicions must have been wrong. The roads were empty at one o’clock on a Saturday morning, and he would have easily spotted a car tailing him.
    He had a couple of hours’ driving ahead of him, but in spite of his exhaustion he felt totally awake. It was an effort, but he forced himself to stay within the speed limit. He wanted no undue attention tonight. He didn’t know how all the systems of the police worked together, but if his name was down on some list of ‘persons of interest’ he didn’t want to be flagged up. It was a rough night, though. Following such a sunny day, a fiercewind had blown up from nowhere, and the trees were swaying violently from side to side.
    An hour and fifty minutes later, courtesy of the total absence of traffic at this ungodly hour, Robert arrived at his destination. At just before three o’clock in the morning it would be entirely inappropriate to ring the doorbell – at least if he wanted to get the right result. This had to be handled well, and he was going to have to bide his